


And There It Is

by SatiricalDraperies



Series: Inception Gen Week 2019 [2]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Inception Gen Week 2019, Yusuf-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-10 11:23:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19904941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SatiricalDraperies/pseuds/SatiricalDraperies
Summary: inception gen week day 2: backstoryin which Yusuf discovers chemistry





	And There It Is

“Have some mint,” his mother says. “It’ll help you feel less hungry.”

“How?” Yusuf asks, his belly empty but his mind full of questions about the world.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I failed chemistry.”

And there it is. _Chemistry._ The guide to the universe, if only Yusuf could figure it out. His mother is the smartest person he knows at eight years old, and that doesn’t change much over the following years. If she failed chemistry, what hope does he have? He was never great at spelling or reading or memorizing times tables. Art was the only class in primary school he had any skill at, and that didn’t really count, right?

But there he is, in high school chemistry, and the teacher starts by drawing a circle on the board.

“This,” she says, “is an atom.”

As the course continues, the drawings get more and more complex until she’s using CAD technology to show three-dimensional molecules and Yusuf is spending all of his time at the public library watching lectures online from college professors. He can diagram reactions and balance equations and track energy from one form to another. And he can draw the fabric of the universe. 

He gets lucky with his college dorm, but the room still seems small, filled floor to ceiling with papers. The dates on the whiteboard calendar his mother bought for him might as well not even be there for all of the dry erase sketches. Even his roommate’s side has been taken over by Yusuf’s drawings of compounds, simplified by his newfound knowledge of organic chemistry but complicated by all of the questions that very same class raises. 

His drawings earn him research grants and his research grants earn him more time and resources and freedom to experiment with making his drawings reality, but all the money in the world can’t get rid of the constraints of reality.

Maybe his drawings weren’t meant to be real. Maybe he should stick to dreaming.

_Dreaming._


End file.
